I have three interrelated questions on succession planning. Our 300-person company is coming late to the succession-management game and needs to know the best way to ramp things up quickly. Should we start at the top with our executives, or is it more important to work from the ground up, beginning with key non-executive leadership slots? And how much analysis of our regional talent market should be included in our in-house assessments? As a small company we don't really have a formal board of directors to guide our process. Is that the first thing we should do?

Being in health care, we are finding it difficult to adequately determine the number of staff needed at any given time. We need to develop a forecast for staffing ratios for our busiest shifts. What sort of data should we be examining to accurately predict dynamic demand?

Like many companies, we have an annual performance review of employees. At the beginning of the financial year, KPAs, goals, targets are mutually agreed. There is quarterly review of performance followed by annual review. Employees are rated on predefined performance criteria on a scale of 1 to 5. Subsequent to rating, we wanted our line management to rank employees against each other in order to have ranking order. Line management is not inclined to ranking, for obvious reasons. Is there any way to know if ranking is the right approach for our performance management?

We may have an attrition problem, but I'm not quite sure. Our turnover is between 12 and 15 percent the last three years, but this year is ticking closer to 20 percent. This does not include involuntary terminations due to downsizing/restructuring. We know some turnover is due to market factors, and some due to cultural growing pains (we've doubled in size the last five years). From an analytic view, how could we determine if our turnover might present a future lingering problem?

I am in a new role as Talent Acquisition Coordinator and need some help. What is the best way (or ways) to identify key roles in my company going forward? The big issue is being better able to anticipate those skill and talent needs and take steps accordingly. It sounds simple but can be incredibly hard to get it right
—Anticipation, talent acquisition coordinator, telecommunications, Santo Domingo